Generous gifts from Dr. Robert Lemelson beginning in 2008 have established and sustained the UCLA Indonesian Studies Program. Lemelson is a UCLA lecturer and researcher with interdisciplinary interests and a respected documentary filmmaker.

Robert Lemelson, Ph.D., is an anthropologist who received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and his doctorate from the UCLA Department of Anthropology. He is a research anthropologist at the Semel Institute of Neurosciences at UCLA and lecturer in the Departments of Anthropology and Psychology. His areas of specialty are Southeast Asian studies, psychological anthropology, ethnographic film, and transcultural psychiatry. He was a Fulbright scholar in Indonesia in 1996–97 and has worked extensively exploring the relationship between culture and health in Bali and Java.

Lemelson is the president and founder of The Foundation for Psychocultural Research, a non-profit research foundation supporting research and training in the neurosciences and social sciences, and director of Elemental Productions, an ethnographic documentary film production company.

Generous gifts from Dr. Lemelson beginning in 2008 made possible the UCLA Indonesian Studies Program within the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the International Institute. Since then, he has extended his support of graduate fellowships, conferences and workshops, and visiting scholars hosted by the program, as well as supporting the Advanced Indonesian Abroad language program, sponsored by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies from 2013-2017.